Category: Current Events

The Means of Production – Part 1

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So, what to write about tonight?  Tucker?  Elon?  The Biden Crime Family’s Congressional investigation?  Trump and his various legal problems.  The Republican presidential contenders?  Dementia Joe’s sinking ratings?  The crime-drenched cities?  The invasion at the southern border?  The collapsing banks?  Stagflation?  The Ukraine War?  Bud Light’s ongoing sales freefall?

Meh.  Just not in the mood.  Maybe it’s the crazy local things I’m involved in.  Maybe it’s too much same old, same old.

Well for whatever reason, let’s talk about something different.

I was reading recently about a studio that has been producing family friendly movies.  Mostly Christian movies but not exclusively.  Let’s call them Christian friendly.  They recently had a hit with a movie called the Jesus Revolution, “a feel-good movie about hippies who returned to Christ during the 1970s, starring former “Cheers” and “Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer – has grossed more than $52 million since its debut just a few weeks ago, making it the most successful film released by studio heavyweight Lionsgate since 2019.”

Many years ago, I remember watching a few of the movies produced by Christian churches and other organizations.  And although it was refreshing to see entertainment that stressed religious values and themes, they were notable for very simplistic plots and amateurish acting.  I guess the cast was more living the moments of the plot rather than acting them.

““The biggest critique on Christian art of the last thirty plus years, is that it’s not good, or it hasn’t been good,” said Terence Berry, COO of Wedgwood Circle, a nonprofit that connects investors and creators to develop projects that are informed by their Christian faith. “And I do think there have been huge strides made in people creating content for the faith market.””

Move forward twenty years and the producers now out there like Wedgwood and Angel Studios are producing movies that can be viewed by mainstream audiences without eye-rolling.  Berry calls it “a third way.”

““Can you offer stuff that is not perceived as faith market, and that is really well done, and it’s good, true, and beautiful, and it’s speaking to larger questions and it is aligned with your faith,” he asked, “but it is done so in a way that allows other people from outside the faith to engage and like that content?””

In the article the writer mentions that these producers are producing movies and arranging theater distribution using both investor and crowd-funded capital.  And the products include movies, music, books, television, and radio shows.  In fact, there are even animated movies in the works.

So why is this interesting?

I think because Hollywood is melting down.  Other than super hero movies Hollywood has only had a very few actual blockbuster hits in the last ten years.  Tom Cruise in Top Gun is that exception that proves the rule.  And it’s especially relevant because it’s one of the few movies that bucks all the stupid trends that have cost Hollywood its audience.  It’s patriotic.  It doesn’t pound away at woke tropes.  It doesn’t replace entertainment with an agenda.  It doesn’t denigrate its audience.

So, with Hollywood marching into the ocean and at the same time starving audiences for wholesome content.  And with streaming and the lower price of computer-generated imaging making fantasy and other genera movies orders of magnitude cheaper than just a few years ago, this is the perfect time for small production companies to provide people with entertainment choices they sorely lack.

And I think it’s finally, finally beginning to happen.  I’ve watched some short sci-fi movies on YouTube that come close to Hollywood level special effects.  And because of how Hollywood is using “diversity, inclusion and equity” there are many unemployed straight, white, male actors, writers, directors and other creatives that could use work.  In such an environment I think we’ll start seeing more and more breakout productions that owe their success to giving people the entertainment that Hollywood refuses to produce.

But here’s the point.  All of these people trying to produce this content didn’t get into it because they always wanted to build their own movie studios.  They’re doing it because the movie studios told them that the content they wanted was wrong and shouldn’t exist.  So, they had to become movie makers.  Same thing with book authors.  The books we like are so evil that the publishers are retroactively changing the text of old classics like Roald Dahl’s children’s books.  Same for music, same for art.  Same for education.  If we want what we think is right we’re going to have to make it ourselves.  Internalize that and employ it as needed in your life and you’ll start changing things for the better.

If you don’t like the crap on display in woke world then search out something better at the fringes.  And if that doesn’t exist, then do it yourself.  That’s the lesson.

I intend to start looking for some of these movie projects and try them out.  I’ll report back on what I find.

10MAY2023 – OCF Update – Just a Note After a Long Day

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Long, long day.  Much too tired to write anything coherent.  And an early morning on top of that.  But I always like to have something up on the site.  I was surrounded by the folks of Dunwich in all their various manifestations.  It was literally the good, the bad and the ugly.  But it was fun and energizing.  Mothers with young children, families, very old folks and everything in between.  And lots of working men too.  All of it full of local color and mostly good humor.  There were a few discordant notes.  Some confused or angry faces.  Folks lashing out or clueless about what is going on around them.  But they’re part of the mosaic.  They’re an aspect of the story.  They represent what the fragmentation of our local society leads to.

I also saw something that explains why the Democrats control New England.  It’s because the Republicans are leaderless.  They don’t organize or even communicate effectively what’s going on or what their goals are.  They’re too busy with their own lives to build anything.  They don’t have the bandwidth to compete with an entrenched Democrat organization.  So, they lose ground steadily.  Leaving is the smart thing to do for the young.  There are more opportunities to improve your own life and the community in a red state.

But all in all, it was an interesting day.  Later on, today I’ll catch up on the news and try to write something substantial.  But as discouraging and frustrating as most of the events going on around me are, I still see that getting involved is the correct strategy.

Well, gotta get some rest.

Whiling Away the Hours

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Today will be a lost day.  I’ll be essentially off the grid until 11 pm.  So, I’ll just put together some thoughts now to cover the day.

I was very happy that American Greatness posted my article “You Gotta Laugh.”  And not only because it multiplies the traffic to my site several fold.  But because it’s nice to get the visibility that a larger spotlight can afford.  Let’s face it, Google and Facebook don’t amplify the reach of right-wing sites.  In fact, it would be accurate to say they hide them.  So, it’s a treat when I can have one of my posts sitting at the top of a webpage that gets thousands of visits per hour.  That was fun.

It really does seem that the message on the street is that Joe Biden isn’t popular.  Could this be the long-awaited pivot to dumping Biden from the 2024 race?  How would that be done?  Some are saying that Gavin Newsome will challenge Biden in the primaries.  Others are saying that’s impossible.  Their alternate theory is Biden will be forced out through revelations about his corrupt influence peddling through his crackhead son Hunter.

Well, if challenging Biden in the primaries is impossible, exactly how does the Deep State keep him from running again?  I mean, I could see them earlier on threatening to reveal his corruption as a way to convince him not to seek re-election.  But if he’s already running, will they be able to convince him to drop out.  I guess it’s possible the media companies could cooperate and fabricate a bunch of polls showing Biden so far down that it convinces the American people that Biden is through and thereby convinces Biden too.  But I’m not sure Biden would take the hint.  He may be convinced that presidential immunity is the only thing that can keep him from being indicted.  Maybe he plans suicide as his way out.  Or maybe he’ll use dementia as his shield from prosecution.

And the other big story is the regional banks tottering on the edge of insolvency as depositors pull their money out.  This is round two of this crisis.  2008 was the first occurrence.  And that first round put our government into permanent emergency mode.  It was that bank crisis that force the whole financial system to adopt zero-interest rates and permanent quantitative easing.

But now because of the sanctions against Russia and the Green New Deal, the administration has unleashed dangerously high inflation.  That forced the Fed to increase interest rates and now all these banks are stuck with billions in underwater government bonds.  Checkmate.

So how does Dopey Joe talk his way out of this one?  Will faking a re-election solve his problem or just ensure that a blowup occurs on his watch?  I really can’t tell.  I have a feeling he’s hoping that a miracle will happen in the next year to make his problems go away.  But I think that’s highly unlikely.  What will probably happen is a pretty serious recession.  All the symptoms are there to see.  Maybe things will get so bad that not even the election fixers can throw this one to Joe.  It’s possible.

But the bad guys have called the shots so far.  We’re forced to sit here and watch this farce.  Well, watch it we will.  I’ve become stoical about the whole thing.  I’m sort of fascinated by the scope of the debacle.  I guess when I’m bankrupt and homeless it’ll feel less theoretical.

But until then I’ll be here babbling about the folly of our elites and their hopeless crusade to make the world safe for woke insanity.  See you tomorrow.

08MAY2023 – Just Some Thoughts

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“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

My word, but that Billy Shakespeare could turn a phrase.  Now, I’m not preparing to storm the walls of a French town but I am steeling myself for about eleven days of grief.  This week is disrupted but next week promises to be a disaster.  Well, I asked for it, now I’ve got to see it through.  It’s like everything in this world, the reality never completely corresponds to the theory.  But I’ve always been the king of wingin’ it.  So, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.

I watched a video with that Grima Wormtongue of Washington insiders George Stephanopoulos surrounded by his panel of losers.  He had Chris Christy, Donna Brazile and two other boobs I’d never heard of.  They were bemoaning an ABC poll that shows Biden with an approval rating of 36% and trailing Donald Trump 42% to 49% in a general election.  They said Biden’s age and mental health were factors and also the awful economic conditions that Americans are suffering under.

Well, duh!

What I liked about this video was how scared they all sounded about the budget negotiations and how maybe this time McCarthy has them over a barrel and the Democrats will have to cut the trillions in graft in order to get the debt ceiling approved.  As far as Trump or any Republican winning the White House, I think that’s just happy talk.  The voting fix is in for the swing states so winning the presidency is almost certainly not going to happen.  But it’s still nice to see that most of the country hates Creepy Uncle Joe.

I see that the protests have begun in New York City to try and force the DA to charge Daniel Penny with murder for the killing of Jordan Neely.  Well, it’s no surprise.  And just to add some irony to the event they disrupted subway travel to make their point.  The cretins were on the subway tracks in Manhattan.  Sadly, none of them were run over by a train or electrocuted by the third rail but they managed to infuriate the commuters trying to get to work and home.  I’m sure it won’t be long before the despicable Manhattan DA railroads this young man and sets him up for a kangaroo court conviction.  But we’ll soon see where this goes.  And either way it will be instructive of the true direction that New York City will be heading in the future.  My guess is cannibalism.

I feel like a lot of people are waking up to the new reality.  The shock at the banana republic tactics that we see all around us has worn off.  And that’s a very good thing.  When you lose your illusions about your surroundings then you can make much more effective decisions.  And in that way, we will stop falling into the same traps that they’ve been springing on us for decades.  We won’t latch onto the next “approved” choice that we hope will be on our side.  So, no more JEB!, no more W, no more RINOs, no more establishment ringers of any sort.

I hope to do my best to produce content over the next week or so but there may be some glitches.  So, stay tuned and we’ll muddle through somehow.

The Perfect Example

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Jordan Neely was the embodiment of Black Lives Matter’s method for destroying America’s cities.  Here is a serial criminal who shook down subway passengers for money by screaming in their faces and threatening violence if they didn’t pay.  And these weren’t idle threats.  He had been arrested previously for four assaults and there is a video of him slamming a woman against the outside of a subway car.  At the time of his death, he had forty-two prior arrests.

The young man, a former Marine, who tried to hold him until the police came was doing what countless people probably wished they had the guts to do.  But now he’s facing the prospect of being prosecuted for murder.  So, this is the essence of what Barack Obama, BLM, Soros prosecutors and the Justice Department have created.  Black criminals are given free rein to harass, humiliate, terrorize and even assault innocent bystanders.  And if anyone tries to resist then this resistance will be criminalized to the full extent of the law.  Even the police are now the victims of lawfare whenever they try to do their jobs.  And in consequence of which they now seldom bother to prevent crime.  They take their job to be just collecting statements and calling for the ambulances to transport the victims to the hospital.

Essentially the private citizen realizes that he’s on his own whenever he walks down the street or descends into the subway.  The police are no longer a deterrent and won’t arrive in time to prevent his assault or murder depending on circumstances.  So, the young man who killed Jordan Neely decided that instead of allowing the people in the subway car to be victimized and harassed by Neely he would use his combat training to incapacitate Neely until the police could take him into custody.

Neely’s advocates say that the Marine should have just ignored Neely and in fact many of these people say the commuters he was harassing on the train should have just handed over money to him.  And that’s the whole thing right there in a nutshell.  According to the Left and the people they’ve put in charge of criminal justice in these cities, you must endure harassment, humiliation, intimidation, even physical assault because the people assaulting you are victims and therefore deserve to make your life miserable.

So, this case is the encapsulation of the whole BLM reign of terror.  Places like Chicago and New York have been transformed from safe, clean centers of commerce and culture to dirty, dangerous hellscapes filled with homeless encampments, drug addicts, criminals, fear and misery.

But now if this young man is prosecuted for defending the people who the police no longer protect, then the City of New York has officially sanctioned the targeting of innocent people by criminals.  The criminals like Jordan Neely aren’t jailed for these crimes.  Even if they are arrested, they will not be detained but instead let go the same day to continue in their criminal pursuits.  Whereas if their victims fight back, they will be jailed and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  And the chance of federal charges being added based on the race of the perpetrator is a real possibility.

So far, the usual suspects have been screaming for the Marine’s blood.  But interestingly, neither the mayor nor the wretched district attorney has rushed to declare the young man a criminal.  Maybe it’s possible that the Democrats have told them how bad the optics would be if this man was prosecuted for trying to help his fellow New Yorkers against a deranged felon.  But in the long run I don’t think the odds are with him.

I guess if things turn out badly at least it will be a bellwether to warn the rest of the normal city residents that the only way they can avoid being part of a permanent victim class is by getting the hell out of these cities permanently.